


An Ancient Earth Legend

by KeyDog (BannedBloodOranges)



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series, Star Trek: The Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alien Biology, Alien anatomy, Butch Lesbian Bones, Camping, Dark alternative universe, Disturbing Themes, Dubious Relationships, F/F, Halloween, Implied Mind Manipulation, Memories, Memory, Mind melds, Non Consensual, Not Canon Compliant, Older Characters, Possibly Unrequited Love, Rule 63, Sensory Overload, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, dark!Spock, head the warnings, twists
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-17
Updated: 2019-10-17
Packaged: 2020-12-21 07:31:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21071198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BannedBloodOranges/pseuds/KeyDog
Summary: "I know you." Lenore's hands were shaking. A scabbed part of her, deftly hidden, broke open in her recollection. "I know you, goddammit."During a camping trip between friends, the mounting of old tensions leads to confrontations and conclusions best kept hidden.





	An Ancient Earth Legend

**Author's Note:**

> Non-profit fun only.
> 
> A good ol' fashioned dark!fic for Halloween. 
> 
> For this specific fic, please heed the warnings.

_The ghost inside my head, it never sleeps_  
_ It just rearranges thoughts and leaves me numb for weeks_  
_ But I'm okay, yeah I feel fine_  
_ Because I know there's more than one way to lose my mind_  
_ Lose my mind_  
_ Lose my mind_  
_ Lose my mind_

_And all this time, I've been watching you sleep_  
_ And the strangest things have been happening to me, oh_  
_ And all this time, I've been watching you breathe_  
_ And the strangest things have been happening to me, oh_

**_The Strangest Things,_** Radical Face

* * *

The air had freshened since they had taken their leave, and the nights hence had been breezy, crisped with the chill, the start of autumn dampening down the summer. 

They'd taken their bare essentials, pots and pans and a large backpack with the sleeping bag coiled under like a snail. The way of the ancients, Lenore would say. What once had been necessity had become a tokenistic activity, like carving pumpkins at Halloween. 

Spock hadn't been invited. 

She had wanted to spend her shore leave with Jimena, just the two of them, old friends beneath the canopy of unspoilt America. The holiday had played out in her head like a dream. Rough soil flours, decked with leaves and grass, bonfires licking yellow light on Jimmy's high cheeks, the moon above and hot beans on the stove.

Jimmy had beamed down clad in all her camping gear and dressed like a lumberjack lesbian pin-up from the 1980s (Bones wasn't complaining.) Spock had shadowed her, in the ugliest anorak she had ever seen, high necked blue canvas with green ridges on the elbows. Bones didn't let her face fall for a second, even if the sight made her feel like complaining, but Jim had that silly look on her face that just spelt _ I couldn't leave her out _and why the hell not? Jim and Spock lived together for damnation's sake; Bones wanted Jim to herself for at least a weekend.

But damn it, Spock was there, with sleeping bag hung from a slender shoulder and tricorder at her hip, and more than that, a pair of experimental rocket boots parting the grass beneath her.

* * *

She and Jimmy had a fingerbang in an old corvette back in their academy years. Jimmy had been different back then, a soft farm girl with curves in all the right places, soft stomach and thighs, enough to render skinny, bitter Bones speechless. Her hair had been softly waved from the plaits Bones had struggled to undo and her lips had been wet and pink with gloss, and Bones was a dirty old mare who should have kept her hands to herself. Even now, in plaid shirts and trucker jeans, apple-cheeked with her curls all sunbleached and shorn above her ears, she was still radiant, although she had decidedly lost that girly edge in her autumn years. Menopause hadn't bristled her through; she was still as round as a dumpling and as virile as a cougar. Although their brief fling hadn't translated to a relationship, it had come full circle into a lifelong friendship and the occasional guilty fantasy on Bones's part.

As for Spock, well, she was something else. A feline body with saturnine cheekbones and sloe eyes, those damned hobgoblin ears thinned into fine points. She aged differently to the softening tissues of Jim and Bones. If ol' Iowa sweetheart Jimmy had a light that bloomed like the beginnings of a sunset, Spock was twilight dark. Lines sat hard but handsomely on her face, and she had no curves to speak of, no breasts or ass or anything, just up and down like an ironing board.

Almost like Bones, but she wasn't bitter about that. She just didn't know what warm, soft Jimmy saw in that bundle of straight lines and logic. 

Jimmy wasn't always that soft. She remembered the glory days, she did, hard hunger for the command to go along with her firm, fertile shape. _ Jesus Christ, _ she'd been a force to be reckoned with, and beautiful, too.

No bodily hardening for poor Jimmy, though. That body was blushing and curvy and would be so until the end of time, no matter how many times she dragged herself up a mountain with chalked hands and trucker boots and no matter how many times Bones had prescribed salad and exercise that would have rendered any other person a muscular stick. She'd grouched as a Doctor, but as a dirty ol' southern belle, she liked her with flesh on her bones, all that soft and skin filling out her clothes so nice, _if you know what I mean. _

She'd learned to look a little less, however, since Spock had taken her as a partner, a wife and bondmate - whatever that was. Not to say that hadn't come with a personal cost for Jimmy, and selfish cost for Bones. To think, how exhausting the five-year mission and the years beyond that had been, all that death and noise and pining, then that separation that had throttled Jimmy right through and left Bones holding the proverbial baby, but then Spock had come back and all had been fine and dandy and Spock had said, _I want you, Jim, all of you _ and Jim had once again laid her neck out for Spock, said _yes anything just please, please don't leave me again. _

They'd gotten bonded in secret in the depth of the Vulcan Embassy. Bones had been there, feeling like the bridesmaid at the back scoffing cake and eyeing up, well, the other bridesmaids.

Since the end of the first five-year mission, Jim had turned away the short-skirted dresses, cut her hair above her ears, given up on the lipstick and eyeshadow, been severe and shapeless in the grey jumpsuits Starfleet tried to push years back. But when Spock had appeared on the bridge in a slick robe of black and silver, had Jimmy appeared only hours later with a soft curl in her hair and rose lipstick, in a flattering white t-shirt held over her breasts and tucked into her waist. Spock had looked at her so cold and shallow and Lenore had to stand there and pretend to smile and be supportive and not hate, _hate _Spock at that moment.

But then came the reconciliation, where Bones had stood in the poignant passion of their clasped hands, cold in her belly for the first time in years to see them so together. She, of course, lingering on the outside as always.

At the bonding, Jim had been dressed in robes of gold and starlight blue, her hair grown past her shoulders in the months since and groomed up above her head in a spiral. Spock had stood before the elder in black and silver, curled boots like a queen of the fae. And Jimmy, looking lovelier than she had in years, ten years younger with that blush on her cheeks and looking at Spock as if the sun had come out and Bones, staring at her in nothin' but her dress uniform and the memory of that mouth, once upon a time.

But who knew that being married to Spock would cause such a drift of Jim's time and energy? That Spock, now she had Jim, was as demanding in her love, both given and taken, as any threat they'd faced when patrolling the galaxy. There was no place Jim could go where Spock did not follow, and after she became Admiral, did Spock discount the decision, and whilst Bones did agree ( _ for god's sake, go back before you really get old _) Spock seemed to press the issue until Jim seemed to sink into herself, doubt gnawing on her about whether her fate was as a free woman or as an upstanding member of Starfleet.

Then, Spock had died, and Jim, for a while, had been free, only Bones had not, and what a dirty trick it had been, she thought back with both frustration and fondness, to have the green bitch rattlin' around in her noggin and keeping a keen eye on things, even borrowing her tongue, her eyes, heat in her head whenever Jim came close like a blood pressure cuff on the brain.

Before they rolled into port after they shot Spock into the sky, did Jim come to her room, dropping pieces of herself in the path from the bridge to Bones's quarters, and fell into her arms, her bed (_Am I betraying her, Bones, doing this, but I need someone, I need you, I wasn't lying when I said I needed you, need you both, please so much _) and Bones, her brain scrambled and her tears not yet dry, had opened Jimmy's legs, even with the echoes in her head, but that was the grief, wasn't it, nothing else, surely?

(She doesn't think that maybe Jimmy had sensed, unconsciously, the tremors of a bond unbroken by the thing curled in her head, and had been drawn to it, to find the right shapes in the wrong shell of Bones's body.)

But Spock had returned by some claptrap scientific miracle, a new intimacy birthed between her and Jim like nothing before. And so, that night, they never spoke of, and Bones was once again the longtime friend, presiding over Spock's possessive take of Jimmy's time, body, that strange alien hold that Bones did not understand and Jim did not question, because she loved her so fucking much.

Speaking of weird alien bullshit, they spanned several seven-year itches; Bones had seen the way possessiveness drew a black curtain across Spock's face. She'd tended the aftermatch each time. (Jimmy, smiley but shaken, distances in her eyes and whimpers in her mouth, and she does not think, does not say anything, because it's not her business, none of her _ goddamn _ -)

* * *

Along the track they went, Lenore cussing and Jimmy laughing and Spock's not so annoying silence, and despite the intrusion, Lenore could trick herself into thinking they were goin' have a good time. At least, maybe, Spock could wander off into the woods, leaving Jimmy and her to swap drinks and stories.

A hopeless wish. Jimmy had set her sights on the mountain overlooking their sleeping spot and was attempting to incite a coronary in Bones, the typical henpeckin' nurse, who could only curse and gasp and glare through her binoculars.

The hum of aerodynamic engines parted the dirt around her trucker boots. Spock drifted above as a crane caught in flight; her black hair, spun above her head, was immaculate despite the changing winds, and the intent of her gaze was locked on the ascending figure. The serenity of the scene, the ease and care in which Spock held herself, and the position and accessibility she was granted, to Jim alone, rode a bitter tremor through Bones. Grinding her teeth, she dropped her binoculars and stalked back to camp. Kicking away the dry bracken from the dip of the fire, she fished in her pocket for the sweet weight of her Tenessee Whiskey. 

"Doctor." The whiskey did a double-take. Easing herself beside the fluttering fire was Spock. "Are you well?"

"Fine." She sneered. "Oh, I'm just dandy. Nothin' quite like comin' all this merry way to watch the dear old Captain kill herself on a cliff face."

"The Captain is efficiently confident in her ascent, Doctor."

"I'm more than confident in her descent, to be honest." She took another swig. "Why don't you go and haunt her for a while, seein' as you are so eager to not let her alone for a damn weekend."

She hadn't meant to say it so loud and bitter. It had been a while since she'd had that bite on her tongue, that twist of spite. The silence was her only response; the soft hum as Spock's boots met the ground.

She prayed for Spock's signature obliviousness, that thick-headed Vulcanism. 

But alas.

"You believe I am intruding," she said calmly as if stating the weather.

"Bullshit," Bones swilled her whiskey in her mouth. If the burn could close her throat, shut down that ignoramus she calls her tongue, she'd be eternally grateful. "I didn't say anything of the sort."

It was a lie, and they both knew it. Even dry, damned Spock.

"You implied it as much," she replied, with the tenacity of a dog with a bone. It was almost like the opening to one of their grand debates. But Bones wasn't in the mood. She didn't feel invigorated, just tired.

"Fine." She sat down heavily. "Go and bother Jim."

"I believe this conversation has yet to be concluded."

"It's not a conversation I'm interested in having."

"Did I intrude..."

"You know you did," Bones slammed her canteen in the dirt. "Don't be so damn dumb."

A quiet fell. 

"Jim is my wife," she said. It could have been Bones's imagination, but there was a smugness, somewhere, hidden in that gravel she called a voice. "It makes sense that I accompany her on her travels."

"But all the time, dammit! You need to give her breathing room."

"I believe you will find, Doctor," She elevated herself again, but added, softer; "That the Captain struggles to breathe if I am not present."

The branches wove softly in the sunlight, sun-dappled pools of shadow floating over Bones's knees. She glared at Spock and saw how the light brought out the agate black of her eyes, thoughtful and without malice, and had a memory, of a dead-eyed woman in her middle years, slumped beside a glass door, and she'd wondered then if Jim had been on the wrong side.

"Better go to her then," She turned away. "Keep her safe for me."

"I will do, Doctor."

A hiss of air and exhaust and Spock was gone.

* * *

Over firelight, they'd laughed, shared stories, chewed over the beans sweetened by her whiskey and even tried a singalong. For a moment, it had been like old times. Shoreleave in the Academy years, more like. Spock might have entertained the galaxy explorer in Jim but Bones knew about the dust and grit of that sweet-faced Iowa farm girl.

Damn Spock sitting there, poking at her beans with her spoon, brows drawn together like a confused kid trying to figure out that Santa Claus doesn't actually have flying reindeer.

The singalong, as typical of anything, was unable to sustain under Spock's quizzical levels of questioning and finally, Bones had split her wick.

"God," She sighed at Jim. "I preferred her before she died!"

"Okay, okay," Jim was a soldier, not a diplomat. Handling Bones and Spock over the years had given her a good leg up in mediating, Bones thought grimly. But as per typical, she deferred to Spock. Even after Spock seemed to have fully regained her memory, there were still times Spock happened upon that soft, tentative tone of the questioning amnesic and Jim would fold as easily as a card castle in the wind. "Let's get some sleep, alright? We've got a long hike in the morning."

"Affirmative, Captain," Spock lay herself down, obedient. 

Grateful for the muss of the drink on her tongue, Bones splayed herself out on her sleeping bag, humming _row your boat _and taking another swig for good luck.

She must have dozed, for the shuffling of fabric and the rise of voices seemed to distance over the next hour, until a muffled protest snapped open her eyes.

"Jim." Spock kneeled beside Jim's sleeping bag. Held out in her hand was a cup of something dark, glutinous. Bones immediately sat up, the drink making her head sing, but not enough to quell the stab of her curiosity, her concern. For a moment, Spock seemed to loom. For a moment, Jim seemed to shrink. "I must insist."

"Spock, you're turning into Bones...."

"A most unfavourable concept. But you must drink, Captain." She tilted it up to the curve of Jim's lip. Her other hand rested on Jim's chin and cheek, holding her in place. "It is for your health."

"Wait." Bones shoved off her sleeping bag. There was the tiniest freeze in Spock's shoulders. "What's all this about health? That's my territory, right? Not practising medicine without a licence, I hope."

"Bones," Jim weakly chuckled. Bones narrowed her eyes. "It's nothing, just my nightly supplements. It tastes quite awful, I..."

She opened her mouth to explain; Spock took the opportunity to pour it down her throat.

"Spock!" Bones rose in a shout. Spock sat like a stone, running her hand over Jimmy's shaking back. "What the hell was that, woman?"

Spock did not respond. She kept her gaze fixed on Jimmy, the moonlight pinching thin points of light in her eyes. 

"It's okay, Bones," Jim choked it back. "It's just a supplement. Vulcan made, something like that."

"Jim must take it nightly," Spock stroked down Jim's cheek, cutting quickly across Bones's infuriated protest."I apologise, Jim. I did not mean to apply it so harshly."

Any concern dropped instantly from Jim's face. She sighed and reached for her. A tightness coiled into the centre of Bones's gut, a pulse in her jaw.

"I want a sample of that, now." She jabbed a finger at the empty cup. "I'm going to run some tests on it."

"Now, Doctor?" Spock caressed the back of Jim's neck. The woman was already asleep, folding herself up into Spock's arms. A nerve twitched in Bones's temple. "Why, under the circumstances, I do not believe that to be wise."

"What do you mean?"

"It is late, Doctor." She smoothed out Jimmy's hair. The youngest Starship Captain in history slumbering like a child, and the sight made Bones ache. "Surely it can wait until morning."

"I don't like it, Spock!"

"There is little you do like, Doctor."

"This is different!"

"Go to sleep, Lenore." Spock crossed to her sleeping bag. "I shall not discuss this further. This is not a competition for Jim's affection; this is a matter of health."

"Competition!" Bones scrambled to her feet. "You green-blooded bitch, how dare you imply I would let petty emotion cloud my medical judgement! I am a Doctor first and foremost, and you better not forget it."

"Indeed, Doctor," Spock replied. She seemed too sharp, too imposing in the moonlight. No more sweetly ignorant questions. Surprise per fucking surprise. "Your questionable medical practices are indeed unforgettable. More so, your selfish need to drive passions over the objective ethical clarities of logic."

"Hold your tongue, Spock!" Bones spat on the ground between them. The fire crackled sparks and ash in the air, angry shadows burrowing the hollows of their eyes. Bones curled up, her chapped fists rising to her chest and hip, an old muscle memory of the farmyard brawls that won her Jimmy's beloved nickname. Lenore the bone breaker, who first knew how to shatter bones before she could mend them, but only those who ran their mouths. "This isn't the time to test me! What the hell was that?"

"I don't know what you mean," Spock sat down on her mat with that awful spidery grace that had bewitched Christine so acutely. She looked up under the dark lick of her lashes. "Go to sleep, Doctor."

Bones stood there, with her shaking fists, the muscles in her jaw churning around her teeth and tongue. Somewhere, deep in the woods, a fox called, laughed.

With a staggering breath, she kicked over her sleeping bag and rolled herself up in it, zipping it to her neck. 

* * *

A stirring of soil pricked her ears. 

Bones lay still. Nightmares had flocked shallowly in her brain, the wet lick of anxiety in her gut keeping her nerves afire. The drink had done nothing but sink her grievances further into the soak of soft tissues around her bones, and now she was awake and watching.

The moon was behind Spock, the indigo shape of her shadow moving over the crackling of the bonfire. She slipped beside the lumpy mound of Jim's sleeping bag, where a click of the zip was pulled asunder.

With guttural Vulcan playing hard on her contralto tongue, Spock cradled Jim's face.

Jim gasped in her sleep, dissolving into a low, startled moan. Bones curled her fingers around the hood of her sleeping bag.

Spock was murmuring sweetly. Bones's Vulcanian was piss poor, but her grey matter had absorbed enough to understand a fair bit during her time as Spock's personal Katra chauffeur. From what she could hear, it sounded like suggestions. And what she knew of Vulcan melding practice - for yes, she had to sit through those seminars the same as every other ranking officer - what Spock was doing was not exactly kosher. In fact -

Bile flared in her throat.

Spock was melding with Jim without her express consent.

_ "Forget." _

"Forget what?" Bones snarled, yanking back her sleeping bag and rising up to her full height. "What the hell you think you're doing, Spock?"

Spock gently detached her hand from Jimmy's sweating forehead and kissed her limp hand.

Light blew in Bones's eyes, as a crack of pain sent her tumbling amongst the leaves.

All the shadows drew under Spock's eyes, as if all the ghastly folktale of the lands was eating up into her. A hobgoblin, a tool of the devil, witches and black cats and black shapes hidden in the shades of the leaves. She extended her hand, slow, the fingers closing into a claw, over the hard arch of Lenore's face. The action stirred with memory and Lenore backed off, kicking away the gravel under her feet in a hiss.

"Now, Doctor," Spock said, lightly. "Do you truly wish to wake the Captain?"

"I know you." Lenore's hands were shaking. A scabbed part of her, deftly hidden, broke open in her recollection. "I know you, goddammit."

"Indeed you do, Doctor," she explained, not halting her approach. Cursing her creaking knees, Lenore scrambled away. "Why, to offer an approximation of our acquaintance, as to suit your considerably human understanding, we have known each other, if you will permit the crudeness of the phrase, a hell of a long time."

"Jim!" Lenore barked. Her throat croaked with the rasp of it, and she was suddenly back in a strange sickbay, alone, narrow fingers pressured on her face and her mind prising open. 

Spock shook her head.

"She cannot hear you, Doctor."

"What have you done?"

"I believe..." Spock turned back to Jimmy. A ghost of affection crossed her face. "...it is called a sleeping draught."

Jim had the weapons, the phasers, the damn essentials cuddled next to her. She was the Captain, even off duty.

Her communicator. She fumbled her belt; Spock raised an eyebrow.

"Doctor," she said, with a thread of warning.

* * *

She had not sprinted since she was a girl, dodging lurgy attacks from her brothers and fleeing from a goaded bull. Her muscules, years out of date, shrieked with the pump of adrenaline. She threw her hands up to propel herself, the trees swallowing light and pathways, closing in until all she could feel was branches tearing at her coat, brambles high and horned about her ankles.

An agonising _thump_ threw her. Her well-worn bones crunched as she rolled up the dust, winded, as a shape darted from the corner of her eye and came closer, closer.

She was dragged back by her hair, fingers fastened around her biting mouth. Not back toward the camp, but away, into the ghastly overhang of the forest.

Her boots struggled for purchase amongst the mess of the forest floor. Creatures ran over her legs, desperate for freedom. The light of their bonfire became dimmer and dimmer until the undergrowth swallowed it all together, and with a force she'd forgotten even existed, she was flung, hitting the thick bulk of a tree trunk. The pelt winded her, crumbling her down among the grass, and above her, Spock stood, her arms behind her back..

"You are her, aren't you?" Bones spat blood into her hand. "You're that monster from all those years ago. From that goddamn topsy-turvey universe."

Her sight was blurred by the hit. Spock's face came into view, and yes, there was no doubt. How could she forget the severity of that face, the serene fury barely keeping that animal caged? Even if she had saved her life that one time, it had cost her dearly, an injury far more mental than the impersonality of physical harm.

"You going to kill me, Spock?"

No response.

Spock slid on her hands and knees. She stretched out her back, bones cracking in a vile percussion with the expanse of her ribs. Reaching for her hair, she released the pins and let the oil slick of it fall free around her narrow cheeks and slowly, she began to paw the earth, digging it up beneath her hands.

Bones waited for the hands at her throat. Instead, they settled on her calves, feeling the coarseness of her jeans, and began to massage up, past her knees, to her thighs, to knead between her legs.

God, no.

Nothing like that.

Anything but that, _anything...! _

"No," she muttered under her breath. The fingers pressed, hard, painful, against the seam. Bones screeched and shoved her boot against Spock's flat stomach, feeling nothing but the brunt of muscule. "NO!"

"Why, Doctor," The acidic bite of that voice snapped at the air. "I was under the impression you wanted attention. That you were starved of affection. Well, here it is."

The zip of her jeans was yanked down, and a cool hard hand pushed inside. The contact was a shock, and Bones yelped at it, raising her hand to strike that face she'd called a friend before Spock's spare hand found her neck and _squeezed._

Sadly, it wasn't enough to black her out, just barely enough to paralyse. Her hand fell to the side, useless, as Spock rearranged her in her arms, like she had Jimmy, only hours before.

"You're being cruel." She whispered. The leaves scratched against her face, her nails curling up the dirt. Spock had her on her side, two fingers pushing painfully into her, her thumb rotating slow on her clit. Her muscles strained with the position. "You don't have to be, damn you!"

"I am not cruel, Doctor." Her weight spread across Bones's back, cramping her sore deltoids. "You're dry."

"Old age, Spock," she mumbled into the undergrowth. She could laugh, becoming near hysterical, with that pedantic statement. Being forcefully fingered by your lifelong colleague and all they talk about is the damn desert that is your vaginal passage, like a shiny booklet in a Doctor's office. "Sucks all your juices like a prune."

"Fascinating. I trust you do not supplement yourself with additional hormones?"

You could ask her brothers; she never had much estrogen.

"Fuck you, Spock."

"Hardly, Doctor." She scissored her fingers in and out, and despite the burn and scratch of it, the pressure of her thumb elicited a moan from Bones, humiliatingly tugged from her throat. "Why, under the circumstances..."

"Just get it over with," She buried her head in her arm. She could sense the crook of Spock's eyebrow, could feel the frail leak of herself around Spock's fingers. No point in fighting. She wouldn't win, anyway."Don't talk. Just finish me and erase my mind or whatever you freakish Vulcan bitch wants to do to me."

"Allow me to count the ways," Spock's breath was at her neck, and Bones shivered, for she had forgotten momentarily that this was not her Spock, had never been her Spock, nor Jim's. Out here, under these stars, a wendigo had crawled into the place of her friend and none of them had been any wiser. Maybe Jimmy would have known eventually if she and Spock had chased away their pride earlier, admitted the tension that ate through the air and blew the pupils in their eyes. Spock had been crueller, but more persuasive in her love. She _had _pursued and overwhelmed their Captain with her so-called devotion.

The branches raked her back. The sky was flipped into view, stars shimmering on the purple sparkle lathered under Spock's brows. Bones half expected to see a monster, the shadowy nightmare from decades ago, relived like a fever dream in this wilderness. But she looked like more like Spock now, impassively rolling down Bones's jeans over her skinny legs and folding them neatly beside her.

Fully exposed, Bones shook. She had seen the genitals of all the crew, operated on their secret selves as much as their diet and flu shots. She had tried to intersect the awkward pantomimes with droll humour, distractions, talk of hobbies or children. But now, Spock perceived her with all the compassion of a butterfly pinned to a board. It was clinical and testing and as erotic as a rock.

Her long fingers crept deft up the bones of Lenore's legs, pinching the sag of her skin, rolling her thumbs inside the fold of her vagina. Her head bowed, the silk of her bangs drifting past her thighs like a caress and Lenore felt a tongue.

"No!" She startled, twisting like a beast. Medical school exploded in her head, a flash of a textbook she'd scoffed at. The Vulcan gland that served as their tongue secreted fluid that agitated nerve endings, could inflame and tingle. Too many times had she seen Jimmy dazed and half drooling from a long kiss from Spock. She did not -

"Don't struggle, Doctor," Spock whispered, with a sick attempt at tenderness "This will aid with lubrication."

_ "Aid?" _ She spat. "You'll turn me inside out if you do that! Fuck me with your fingers if you want, but goddammit I know what a probing Vulcan tongue can do."

"Jim does not complain."

Bones violently twitched. There was the slightest pressure of a smile against her leg, and the tongue slipped past her muscule and _oh - _

Spock's kisses with Jimmy were dry and restrained, lips shut, for this exact reason. A culture shock for Jimmy, who always kissed deeply, but Bones guessed in private that was not the case. Post the five-year mission, she had discovered her Captain wandering blank-eyed, as if in a post-coital lull. If a kiss could do that -

The twist of the tongue in her channels was hot, intense, _too much_. It had been more than she'd felt in decades and her knees buckled with it. The tongue prodded around her entrances, teasing her clit, before pushing in deep, deeper. 

"Christ, no," Bones whimpered. She hated the sound as soon as she made it. She'd stared down Khan with a scalpel at her neck, goddammit, but the sniggering purr of Spock against her was enough to weed her out as a coward. Spock's claws curled around her skinny thighs, lifting her, slowly, and the tongue dipped beneath her, trailing tingling saliva to her rectum.

"No!" Bones tried again. "No, damn you, you'll burn me out, no..."

"I believe that is my intention, Doctor."

"What of Jim?" Spock rose at the name, impassive. Her hands sought her face and Bones trembled at the prospect of a meld. "You kiss me, you debase me, you're..."

"Kiss you." Spock nodded. The heat in Bones's loins began to creep, spreading fear in her lower belly. She swore and kicked, her crotch rearing up beneath the rugged hide of Spock's earth jumper. "An acceptable recommendation, Doctor."

Her head was yanked back, and for a second, there was just Spock, eyebrows quirked, before there came a crash of lips and teeth and tongue, invading her mouth. Her cheeks sparked, her mouth opened, her head lolled. Euphoria rushed to her head in spreads of heat and light and she slumped, useless, as Spock kissed her deeply.

Her brain fired in a snap of electricity.

Spock, on the five-year mission. Slinky little kitten she was, all angles and monotonous backchat, no beauty but so striking you couldn't take your eyes off her. Always in the shadow of Jimmy and _Jimmy_, oh, Jim Girl, the golden girl of Starfleet, boldly sucking in starlight with the bump of her hips, the sunlit weave of that smile.

_ Fascinating, Doctor. _

** _ Stop it! _ **

The fingers grazed her forehead, the dent beneath her eye. Pushed light, like a feather.

_ You have wanted so. _

She couldn't work her mouth Inside herself. Her nerves sang and _scorched._

"N-No..." She stammered. She lazily struck away from the hand, or just managed to. "...shit."

"I have all you desire," Spock retorted. Bones glared at her beneath the weight of her eyelids, and chuckled, bitter. What she meant, what she could have meant, or what she intentioned, it was nothing. She was right on all accounts.

The hand withdrew, but the tongue returned, dragging down the dip of her stomach to her high hip bones, and she was flipped, carelessly, onto her front, the stones hiking up under her shirt and coat, twisting around and trapping her movement.

Spock was relentless, her tongue pushing past the muscles of her rectum, her sinuous fingers dipping in and out of her vagina, knuckle deep, and that hard, insistent thumb, pushed almost painful on her clit.

Bones stammered and swore and sobbed. The onslaught was without gentleness, without care, and the residue of the toxic saliva rode her body to exhaustion.

Her orgasm struck like a thunderclap, her cry scattering the night birds.

It all pulled away, leaving her writhing in the dust. She heaved, feeling sick with the sensory overload, the corrosive kiss bungling her brain,

"You're going to give me a heart attack, Spock!"

"Contraire, Doctor."

The spidery fingers scuttled up her hips, past her stomach, moving her with too much ease onto her back. Dazed, Bones felt her jacket shift, leaving her in her black thermal, her ascot askew against her vulnerable neck. 

Spock reared up like a scarecrow in the moonlight, an illustration from a children's horror, and she unclasped her belt, allowing it to fall into the long grass. She shrugged off her ugly jacket, navy blue with green pads (what was Jimmy thinking, letting her walk around like that, thought Bones, hysterical) and with it her thermal undershirt, revealing long breasts, high on her chest, nipples puckered green and finned with black hair. She stripped off her canvas jeans, stepping free from her shoes and underwear. Green veins ran like lacework across her sallow skin, brushed beneath a dark, fine down that curled across her arms, legs, chest, meeting between her legs. Bones had seen the body before, parts and pieces of it, in her endless physicals. But not like this, not like something that had crawled out of a dark part of her imagination, not so primal and powerful and advancing upon her with the slow pad of a predator.

The symptoms of Spock's toxic kisses hadn't abated. Naked to the night air, invisible insects seemed to taint and play inside her. She curled into herself, cradling her gut, resisting the urge to finger herself like a teenager.

"Doctor." Spock crooked an eyebrow. "I assure you, there is no need to be shy. With your medical experience, the sight of a body should be no less stimulating than an object of dissection."

"Fuck you, Spock," Bones whimpered. "What have you done to me?"

"Not relevant, Doctor. I have been generous and done unto you. What I now wish to pursue..." She reached down, curling her fingers around the asoct. Bones's eyes bulged as she was hauled up by the neck. "...what you can do for me. It is only polite, Doctor."

"Spock!" She spat, as the Vulcan opened her legs. "You can't be...no..."

"I did not take you for selfish, Doctor."

"You don't get to take me at all!" 

"A belated statement."

"So you do have a crooked sense of humour, you green-blooded..."

"I would not worry about my green blood, Doctor." Her brows arched toward the tilt of that long, saturnine head. "It is the other secretions on my person one should be cautious of, although, your highly vocal response implies you may not find it so unpleasant."

"What..." Bones grappled at Spock's hands, burning her wrists with the friction of her palms. "...no, you cannot be serious! You can't..."

Her head was wrenched between Spock's thighs, the dart of her tongue as she stirred the protests inside her head finding slick between her lips.

She'd gone down on women before in her youth and good she was at it too, but there was no salt tang on her tongue. No, it tasted bitter, thick, like burnt rosemary and pepper spice, surging up to her nostrils and making her half faint. Something tingled along her mouth, and oh god, something was _moving _within the walls of Spock's sex, in the cleft above her opening, and it slid between the brackets of Bones's open mouth, rubbing across the gums, testing her throat.

Spock purred, a vibration that Bones felt in her mouth, her head, thrumming up between her legs.

The appendage explored, coating the inside of her mouth until Bones gagged, choking back serum that dribbled sage on the corners of her mouth.

"Ah..." She gasped as Spock pulled back, for the small mercy of breath. "W-What the fu-fuck..."

"Language, Doctor," Green shadowed the ridges of her sharp cheeks. "I thought a learned woman as yourself would know. It is, what you humans might call, a clitoris."

Bones could only stare at her.

Spock placed her foot on the stump of a neighbouring tree, and languidly exposed herself with her fingers. The appendage protruded forth, dripping, the nub of its head not unlike the visible tip of the human clit. Anatomy books lumbered into the roar in Bones's head. The deep clitorial structure of the human vagina acted as pleasure circuits, but was hidden from view, beneath the folds of skin that lead into the opening, and -

"Retractable," she burbled.

Spock raised an eyebrow.

"Impeccable, Doctor."

"Oh." Bones began to shiver. She hugged herself, pinching her nails into her arms. "Oh, oh...!"

"It has been said," Spock fondled the crown of her head. "That although our saliva has potency, it is not comparable to the secretions of our genital areas. For as I understand, the strength of our leaked arousal, as you would say, is doubly so."

"You're going to kill me...!"

"Pretend you are not curious, for all it will do," she said, apathetic, and crushed Bones back into the dip of her legs.

It was like kissing, in a way, a sordid dance of her mouth and the thing that tickled the back of her throat as if knowing its own mind, and although Spock was silent, damn her; her fist briefly tremored in the grip of Bones' hair, the only given warning of her climax.

"Oh god, _no_..." Bones moaned. She was released. The slick on her mouth stung like wasps in her belly, bucking her hips. Her eyes rolled in her head. "Oh no, goddammit..."

"Calm yourself, Lenore." Not her name, not her fucking name! "Breathe easy."

"I can't," she whimpered. "It hurts."

"No, it doesn't." Above them, the trees swayed in the wrap of dusk, framing the sky. The stars, so deep in the black, spun out sharp light, piercing the centre of her iris. Her blood burned in supernovas, rushing past her ears, prickling her skin in rashes like the stinging flare of poison oak. Her thin, blunt, used body, long throttled sticks of muscule, all youth sucked from her. She wanted to curl up and wither, tuck away all her ageing skin and bone. 

Spock's gaunt face loomed into view. Her hand settled on Lenore's face, pushing her down into the soft earth, as her fingers descended below the strike of her hipbones, slipping into her, so wet and hot, as the pressure inside her matched the intimacy of touch curling into her mind, evading the heat and noise.

The stars pulsed in the sky, the overgrowth closing in and swallowing them both, as memories began to form, ripen, swell on the branches. 

_ Jimena Kirk, stepping out of the Academy as a young woman of twenty, heavy on the hips with high black boots hoisted on her shapely calves, hair flung black in a lazy topknot of golden brown. Lenore observes, struck, as the girl's flesh twists inside the short-skirted uniform, pressing out plump and firm and Lenore's mouth is dry. Jocelyn speaks, but she's not listening. The sun illuminates the caramel of Jimena's eyes, which are fixed, flirtatiously, on her. Lenore coughs into her coffee, spills it over her black trousers, scalding the skin. Jocelyn is glaring and bobbing their baby daughter on her knee and all Lenore can see is Jim swaying away as she clicks her heels on the stairs - _

_ Jimmy, staggering with books upon books, a PaDD tucked under her chin. Lenore is stretched over the bed, her cowboy hat hung over her nose, but she listens to the flutter of Jimmy's breath as she shimmies out of her dress, sweat and perfume a press on the air - _

_ Lenore is tucked behind Jimmy as she stands in front of the class, eyes shining, voice strong, as she contests her point. Christopher Pike rises to his feet, bemused, but he cannot counter her - _

_ Gabby Mitchell is a poisonous little bitch, plain as a ship's biscuit but charismatic and silver-tongued with the kind of hungry mind Jimmy cannot get enough of, an addictive personality, swaying the queasy plank between spite and fun. She slips her hand under Jimmy's skirt in the lab and Jimmy jumps, falters, her golden confidence falling bit by bit and Lenore swears, throws aside her PaDD and hypos and slaps the smirkin' cow across her face - _

_ Lenore pretends to be asleep as she hears the slaps and sighs from the bathroom, Ruth's high squeaks and Jimmy's warm, reassuring burr. _

_ Lenore's hand skims the elastic of her knickers and she grits her teeth, ripping off the blankets and half running for the labs - _

_ Overhead lights rippling on the pale, precious curves of Jimmy's cheeks, in the proximity on the bar, and Jimmy watches her, curling up her full, soft lips and oh goddammit - _

_ The slippery leather of a car seat, her fingers buried in Jimmy, fucking her slow and steady with her fingers, with the kind of experience most damn women would dream of and there was a reason Jo had married her in the first place - _

_ She kisses Jimena's gasping mouth, dragging her tongue to the sensitive map of her throat. Jimena's breasts are milky and hairless, soft and full and fitting perfectly into the palm of her hands, and Lenore smirks as Jimena's eyelashes flutter, all the hazel furred over with bliss. _

_ "Oh, Jimmy..." She whispers on the inside of her thigh, smiling as she feels the young woman shiver. "You don't know how much I want you, do you?" - _

_ They're on the enterprise and there's a woman, an alien, a hybrid, stood tall and sleek and utterly untouchable. Jimmy flashes one of her effortless smiles and coaxes conversation, smooth and light and Spock's eyes latch on Jim - _

_ She's not jealous - _

_ She has dreams of long sage legs and short, soft hands, mingling in and out of her body, the three of them a tangling - _

"Enough!" Lenore gripped the melding hand. The dreams shifted; she was aware of the thistles, the overhead squawks of the nightbirds, the rustle of animals fleeing in the undergrowth. "No more... I_ beg _you_._"

Spock hushed her, mining her mind. All the memories that she had not seen, not known, she gorged in the computerised banks of that deep, dangerous mind. They weren't hers, they were Lenore's. This was her part of Jim, a closed and sweet section of her life she did not want to share. How dare -!

Spock slicked her fingers free and forced them into Lenore's mouth. The pound and itch of Spock's secretions awoke anew, driving Lenore kicking as Spock aligned herself with her, hip to hip. The thrust and friction of her groin made Lenore shriek, bite down on the probing joints. The pressure of Spock's meld retreated from her temple, but there was a visible drive to Spock now, a flush and fire borne of her absorption of Lenore's memories. She thrust hard, harder, the brush of her vulva a fire on Lenore's aching sex. A slither between her legs made her buck and cry.; Spock's anatomy entered her, dragging burning trails inside her passage, almost painful. She was raw and exposed and terrified, a body alive but mentally exhausted, as if her brain had been squeezed of all fluid and thought like a sponge. Her fingernails scurried at Spock's shoulders, back, her legs curling around Spock's waist. A strength, a shield, a protective armour had been ripped from her, and she had no idea of how she could replenish it. In little ways, she had died several deaths here. Each physical and mental failing had stamped another nail in a coffin she was yet to fill.

"That's it, Doctor," Spock whispered in her ear. Her thoughts flurried naked between them, gaped by the rip in her mind. Two women in their autumn years cradled nude in each other's arms, like young lovers that hadn't felt the thorn of age. Spock the black widow, sinking fangs into her body in place of the kiss and letting the poison rot her form the inside out. The folklore stung Lenore's memory as the intrusion between her legs burrowed deep, licking against her clit. Her eyes rolled to the back of her head."Open to me, for tonight. We are merging, Doctor..."

"Jesus Christ," Lenore spat out her words. Anything to break the cacophony of pants, of the slap and blemishing of skin, of moans breaking too far and easy. Her cry became a high, desperate whine. "Good God, don't do this to me, Spock!"

"...we are_ one_."

Spock's growl dented the breath between their lips as dampness rushed up between them, sticky and warm between their thighs. A silence collapsed on the glade, on them, stacked on each other like spoons.

Bones's face crumbled. She punched the jut of Spock's shoulder. Nothing. Spock had resumed her usual composure, and with that, her stubbornness, impassive at her weeping. Spock blurred through her tears as she drew closer, and Bones felt a dry kiss on her cheek, her temple, moving over to close her lips over her mouth.

Bones wanted to bite the tongue, rip at the lip. But she couldn't. Her body felt starved and twisted and her weary old heart jolted at the stale comfort, and so she lay there, useless, letting her tears be pecked away. 

Spock's fingers found her neck, and pushed, and pushed, and -

* * *

Birdsong flittered in the air. Leaves spun from the sky, resting on her bare stomach. The branches mingled above her, dying dusk fading into the red trickle of the early morn.

Spock's anorak had been placed over her shoulders, tucked under her waist. Lenore sat up, curling it around her shoulders, feeling older than ever in the shiver of the autumn breeze.

Spock, wearing nothing but her grey t-shirt and slacks, meditated on the torn hump of the tree stump. Her thin bones expanded out of her chest with each swell of air. 

Sometime during the night, Spock had redressed her, huddled up her jeans over the tingling flesh of her thighs, even combed out the stubborn stick out of her hair. Spock's palms had been pressed to the hard dent of her belly. The body heat had assured her of some warmth, even as her throat blistered with the cold. 

"Spock." She croaked.

She opened her dark, dark eyes.

"Good morning, Doctor." 

"That's..." Lenore's body sang. She choked out a half-laugh. "...all you can say to me, Spock?"

"What else is there to say?" She wore that same tame expression she'd employed last night, acting all kid-like and confused over whiskey beans.

_ "Why?" _She whispered. Bones tightened her jaw, clicked her teeth against one another. "Why did you do this? Come into our world?"

"Why not?" She whispered, winding her black hair above her head. "In the world I inhabited, Doctor, there was no weakness. So you can imagine, there was no kindness, for that, itself implies a consideration, a pause, a fatality. My way of life was a frustration. To be logical requires a depth of thought my compatriots were unwilling to embrace. I was ruthless, as you can imagine..."

"Oh, I know that."

She raised a primed eyebrow.

"You recall?"

"Can't forget it," Her tone tore, broke into a rasp. She plucked up a stone from the earth and rolled it between her palms. "Why? You've lived in my head, Spock. Didn't you notice the nightmares?"

Spock looked at her for a long time.

"...then, came the transporter incident. The woman who stepped off that pad was unlike the Captain I'd served for blood and profit. She considered, she thought, she philosophised. She was so powerful in her weakness, so sure of it. When I realised who and what she was, in those two minutes before she left, I was overcome. I never should have let her go." She traced her fingers on Bones's face, ghosting over the pattern of the meld points. "When I penetrated your mind, I saw it all. And I wanted it to be mine, and therefore, took the steps to accomplish my task."

She brushed off Spock's hand.

"You..." The soil was compressed with the memory of their bodies, the leaves and twigs leaving dirty, bloodied tracks on her spine. "...should have erased my mind, after all that."

"Hm." Spock rose to her feet. "That would be unethical, Doctor."

"Unethical!" Lenore cast off the coat, rising hastily to her feet. Strain snapped her legs like unbound elastic. "Damn you, you've ruined everything, you murderous hobgoblin! You've chewed up your goddamn charade, and unless you kill me, Spock, it's over. All of it, everything you've built over these years. Do you know what you've done? What this will do to...good god..." She took a slow, stumbling step back, wringing her hand to her chest. "Jimena."

Spock took a step forward. 

"But what of Jimena, Doctor?" She teased, lightly. 

"This..." Lenore hesitated. The truth ploughed a mile hole in her stomach. "...will destroy her."

"Yes," Spock nodded. She did not touch her, even as the ghostly pierce of fingers against her cheek and temple haunted like an aftershock from a dream. "It will, Doctor."

And with that, she smiled.

Bones just stared at her.

The fallout since Spock's death had driven Jim to sorrow so deep that no pill or hypospray or even the old fashioned walks she'd suggested as an ol' Country Doctor; the fresh air and early mornings (_ you must embrace life, bit by bit, you can't die inside and leave us here, you can't do that to us, to me _) could wake her from it.

At that time Spock had died to save the ship, but now Bones knew better. Not to save others, but to save Jim, and she, the catch between, had become the vessel for Spock's desire. Spock knew she would live again and that she would reach Jim, to have and to hold, parted or never parted or some other romantic bullshit. Bones had lived for months with the echo of Spock in her head, felt the toil and twist of her emotions pull her sanity apart like fine threads. She'd drank green tea and sat staring at the wall, thinking of mathematics, and how she no longer could think as fast or as efficient. She'd walked close to Jim and had felt the messy spike of her old, faded feelings boil anew with the kind of love that was almost a horror story, had even had her for a night and even then, that hadn't even been her.

Bones had felt the caress of Spock against her brain, even as she had felt it before, in a cruel funhouse mirror. Why hadn't she realised? Why hadn't she known?

Jim's grief was a pit from which there was no return, and this would be one step too far. This would break her, finally. Suck the gold out of her veins and leave her as crumbled old woman who built and broke a career on a lie.

“Would you truly wield the truth as a weapon, Doctor?” Spock asked mildly. No matter how complacent the years had made her, the wolf still sat snug beneath the wool of the sheep. How much had she pretended, how much had she not? “Do you think she will believe you?”

Would she want to believe? Jim, who had suffered and sacrificed so much - a bastard son from a drunken lay, her beloved ship that had witnessed their adventures and carried them all swift and safely home, all to rescue the Katra of an intruder, a changeling. A changeling she had loved none the less, loved with a desperation that had threatened all their lives. There was nothing Jim wouldn't do for Spock. Nothing. And by the look in Spock’s eye, she knew that, and also, knew that Bones knew that.

“All this darkness,” Bones whispered. “All that you’ve done, so you could crawl your way into her life. Claim what was never yours, to begin with.”

“Affirmative.”

“You killed my friend.”

“She has been dead for many years, Doctor,” Spock replied breezily. “What is done is done. It was merely a circumstance needed to pursue my goals. It was done with my usual efficiency.” She paused. “As a Doctor, I believe it will comfort you to know she did not suffer.”

“You heartless green-blooded bitch,” Bones gripped her heart. The ache and crack in her bones gave way as she sat on a stump. “Goddamn, you.”

“I believe that is your choice, Doctor.”

She spoke gently. It was a pale attempt. 

Bones glared between her fingers.

“We’re all too old for this,” she moaned. “I’m too old for this.”

“If I may use a human proverb, Doctor…” Spock sat nearby, her hands arranged in her lap just so. It was so comforting an illusion Bones barked out a half-dry laugh, mingled with a cry like a child. “One cannot teach an old dog new tricks.”

“You’re saying I should keep my trap shut.”

“Crude phrasing Doctor, but true.” She nodded with a twinge of ice in her eyes, despite her buttery contralto. “Tell me, Doctor, what is the logic in such an act? Nothing shall be gained. Jim’s distress could become a danger.”

“Do not quote to me about Jim’s stress.”

“You forget I lived through your eyes.”

Bones shot up. Spock smiled, although it resembled a snarl. 

“So all your amnesia…”

“Was genuine.” The long fingers reached over, squeezing down on the frail bone of Lenore’s thigh. “But I am adaptable, Doctor. It did not take me long to remember.” She observed her silently, and added; “You were afraid of me, Doctor.”

Bones almost said_ the other you. _

Oh god, to think of her insufferable, gentle friend, forced down to die under the roof of their ship and nobody knew...!

Too old. She'd fought so much, had her brain ripped through again and again.

She'd always done the emotional thing.

Too _old. _

“Yes,” she concluded. “You're a fucking terror. I’ll be a fool to have no fear of you, Spock.”

Her lips curled. Now the truth was out, the sleeping beast crept out for a rumble.

“That is wise, Doctor.”

“If you hurt Jimmy,” Bones growled. “I’ll kill you. You've been given a gift you do not deserve and if you harm her in any way, I'll come after you.”

"Affirmative, Doctor," Spock answered, light once more. "And I trust you are aware of the reverse?"

Bones scowled.

"Affirmative," she parroted. She rose, shaky on her legs. Spock would once have reached out her hand, would have steadied her old friend. But Spock sat, her hands folded over her lap, impassive. But relaxed. She had no fear of Bones, no fear of what she was going to do because she wasn't going to do anything. Bones tottered toward the trees, unclasping her flask from her belt and draining it in one go. 

It was only when she was through the trees, near the ashy trickle of smoke from the dying campfire, did she start to weep.

* * *

The sun opened over the horizon, flooding the trees with light. Jimmy was folding up the camping gear, auburn hair fluffy past her ears. Head back, she finished off her canteen, before she cheerfully tossed it back into the bag. 

"Did you two head off last night?"

Bones sat on the tree stump. She'd rolled herself a joint the old fashioned way, and savoured the tobacco on her tongue. Her body tingled and wept beneath her worn jeans. 

"Nope," She blew smoke toward the sky, insultingly blue. "Can't stand her science chit chat at the best of times, why would I go for an evening amble with her?" 

Jimmy straightened up, shaking off her sleeping bag. Bones watched her warily. Jimmy had been so aware once upon a time, so ready to take on the world, so eager to catch each wind change. Now, she was no less determined, but her impeccable attention to detail had faltered, and she was softer as a result; as if something had gotten into her head, dulled her so sweetly. Bones shivered despite the burn of her cigarette, and she squashed it beneath her foot.

A shadow fell across her lap.

Maybe not so dull.

"Lenore," Jimmy touched her shoulder. "Are you alright?"

Bones shrugged her off.

"Fine," she rose. Her knees crackled and the corners of Jimmy's eyes crinkled. "Just not drunk enough to deal with you, Jimmy."

"I didn't know you required a drink to deal with me, Doctor," She said, teasing, but her hand found her shoulder again and squeezed. Bones closed her eyes, felt the power in it, all that warmth and life, and she leant in, just slightly. 

"Maybe not..." She hated herself, for a singular moment, for wishing there to be nothing in the world but them, just Jim and her, covered by the moss canopies of the forest, lost to all. "...not you, Jim."

A branch broke in the surrounding undergrowth.

Spock appeared, her tricorder hung from her hip, a selection of wildflowers in her left hand.

Jimmy released a breath.

"Spock!" She broke into a grin. "Where were you? Did you and Bones go for a private singalong without me?"

"Negative, Captain," Spock answered. She did not look at Bones, but instead at the screen of her tricorder, scanning the blooms and surrounding trees. "I was merely observing the life circles of your domestic plants. Their life span is considerably lower than the fauna on Vulcan, despite the resident damp and plentifulness of this forest environment."

"Roses are roses, Spock," Bones said flatly.

"Oh, but Bones," Jim regarded Spock fondly, her body lit with love. "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet."

Spock looked up. Her gaze, for a moment, lingered on Bones, before she extended her forefingers in the direction of Jim. 

"Indeed, Jim," she replied, and Jim smiled, almost bashful, and touched her bow fingers with her own. "Indeed."

* * *

There was so much she hadn't noted, so much she'd blamed on age and the encroach of retirement. She'd claimed she was too fed up to engage in politics, just wanted a cosy office and a dog and a pretty face to talk to on lonely nights. But as Spock and Jim wandered ahead, her footfall slowed, and the gnaw on the back of her brain returned. In the new Starfleet regulation, overseen by the Admirals, there was a harshness and rigidity that hadn't been there when she'd strolled through those shining gates as a fresh-faced cadet. Principles that were being swiftly put in place since Spock had accepted her promotion.

The soft haze of the shore leave popped and burnt away like bacon fat. 

Behind her, the sun dipped behind the mountains and rolled off the edge of the world.

* * *

_ "An ancient Earth legend, Mister Spock. A changeling was a fairy child that was left in place of a human baby. The changeling assumed the identity of the human child..." _


End file.
